Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/265

254 Through the little peephole I caught a glimpse of them, entering the street. I went to my bed and lay down quietly in my great pélisse. The clamour and filth of the room brightened and became distant and faded. I heard the voice of the jolly Alsatian saying:

"Courage, mon ami, your comrade is not dead; you will see him later, and after that, nothing. In front of and on and within my eyes lived suddenly a violent and gentle and dark silence.

The Three Wise Men had done their work. But wisdom cannot rest....

Probably at that very moment they were holding their court in another La Ferté committing to incomparable anguish some few merely perfectly wretched criminals: little and tall, tremulous and brave—all of them white and speechless, all of them with tight bluish lips and large whispering eyes, all of them with fingers weary and mutilated and extraordinarily old ... desperate fingers; closing, to feel the final luke-warm fragment of life glide neatly and softly into forgetfulness.